Study on Colloidal Model of Petroleum Residues through the Attraction Potential between Colloids.

The samples of DaGang atmospheric residue (DG-AR), Middle East atmospheric residue (ME-AR), TaHe atmospheric residue (TH-AR), and their thermal reaction samples were chosen for study. All the samples were fractioned into six components separately, including saturates plus light aromatics, heavy aromatics, light resins, middle resins, heavy resins, and asphaltenes. The dielectric permittivity of the solutions of these components was measured, and the dielectric permittivity values of the components can be determined by extrapolation, which increased steadily from saturates plus light aromatics to asphaltenes. Moreover, the Hamaker constants of the components were calculated from their dielectric permittivity values. The Van der Waals attractive potential energy between colloids corresponding to various models could be calculated from the fractional composition and the Hamaker constants of every component. It was assumed that the cores of colloidal particles were formed by asphaltenes and heavy resins mainly; the other fractions acted as dispersion medium. For the three serials of thermal reaction samples, the Van der Waals attraction potential energy between colloids for this kind of model was calculated. For TH-AR thermal reaction samples, the Van der Waals attraction potential energy presented the maximum as thermal reaction is going on, which was near to the end of coke induction period.

Anti-biofouling properties of amphiphilic phosphorylcholine polymer films.

Surfaces of amphiphilic phosphorylcholine polymer (PC1036) prepared by spin-coating were characterized by spectroscopic ellipsometry, water contact angle and atomic force microscopy. The antifouling properties of the PC1036 films to marine benthic diatom Nitzschia closterium MMDL533 were also investigated. The results showed that the dry PC1036 film promoted the adhesion of N. closterium MMDL533 because the hydrophobic lauryl groups were present in the film surface. The 2 h-swelled PC1036 films had excellent anti-fouling properties with extremely low attachment densities and retention densities no matter what the annealing temperature was. The thickness of the coated films lower than 147 Å had a profound effect on the film anti-fouling properties. Otherwise, when the film thickness was higher than that value, there was no more improvement of diatom cell reduction observed. The annealing temperature had only a little effect on the film resistant to diatom adhesion, which might be attributed to two factors including the PC group packing densities in the outer PC layer and the equilibrated water volume fraction in the 2 h-swelled PC1036 films.

Influence of surface free energy on the adhesion of marine benthic diatom Nitzschia closterium MMDL533.

The self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) with gradient surface free energies were prepared by surface grafting of a binary mixture of methyl and vinyl terminated trimethoxysilanes on hydrophilic glass slides followed by in situ oxidation of vinyl groups into carboxyl groups. Characterized by contact angles, the SAMs combined with freshly cleaned glass slides bearing hydroxyl groups were used to study the adhesion behavior of marine benthic diatom Nitzschia closterium MMDL533. The attachment densities were much higher on hydrophobic CH3-SAMs and lower on mixed SAMs with surface free energy of 40.1-50.4 mJ/m2. More gregarious adhesion had been found on hydrophobic CH3-SAMs. The percentage removal was in a narrow range of 63-80% on the engineered surfaces and was much lower with a value of 54% on the hydrophilic slides. Our studies have revealed some subtle but interesting differences in attachment and adhesion from the features reported for these benthic species, indicating the possible links to different diatom species.